Sunday, June 14, 2009

Tornados and Potatoes

Tornados
This past week we had a tornado touch down in Flower Mound. The kids and I were just sitting down for a nice dinner and waiting on Daddy to get home from work. Little did we know that Derek was stuck in traffic on his way home, and his cell service was down because a huge storm system was moving through town. We got a warning phone call from Doug to stay in the house because a storm was moving in soon. Not five minutes later, I heard the tornado siren sound and Doug called to tell me to get the kids into an interior room. So here I was with two kids and two dogs in the bathtub with NO husband. I was trying not to show Claire and Carter how freaked out I was because I didn't want them to get upset, but then the power went out. We all lost it for just a little bit. Thankfully, the siren stopped and the power turned back on. We made it through the Flower Mound tornado that had touched down just a few miles from our house. Derek finally made it home from work but not without driving through what he called, "a war zone." A UPS truck was overturned on the freeway, a power line exploded right next to Derek's car, and Derek had to zigzag down the street to avoid fallen trees. After a cold, but still nice dinner, Derek and I decided to check out our house and backyard. Three panels of our back fence were down, one of the trees in our backyard was down, our iron patio furniture had flown across the yard and landed on top of our overturned grill, and our metal patio umbrella broke in half and flew away. With the help of Derek's dad and grandfather, we managed to get it all cleaned up and put back together this weekend.

Our fallen tree and two downed fence panels


Our other downed fence panel


Our severed umbrella pole



Potatoes
This Saturday morning, I took Claire over to Derek's grandparents' house to work in the garden. His dad and grandfather have been looking forward to getting Claire into some overalls to pick vegetables and dig up potatoes. She had a blast discovering all the plants in the garden, and she got to bring home everything she picked. Tonight I cooked up some fried green tomatoes and grilled zucchini and squash.

Claire with her squash


She was so proud of her two onions


Digging up potatoes


Finding tomatoes with Dooj


Claire with her bucket of goodies

Sunday, June 7, 2009

We're Ready for Pool Season

As the weather in Texas starts to warm up, we begin to get the pool itch. I love the feeling of jumping into a cool pool on a 100 degree day, especially after chasing two kids around all the time. Well for Claire, once a week simply isn't enough. She wants to get the blow-up pool out in the backyard every day. She even puts her floaties on over her clothes just to try to convince me to get us in our suits and outside. Here are some pics of Claire in her swimming attire. I also took one of Carter in the baby pool for the first time.

Claire in her "ballerina" pose

Matching goggles...check

Getting anxious

NOW MOMMY!!!

Carter enjoying his first dip